


Merciful

by Lafeae



Series: Whump/Hurt/Comfort challenge [21]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, Pre-Relationship, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:54:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29953026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafeae/pseuds/Lafeae
Summary: Amidst a zombie apocalypse, Joey is trying to get to his sister and his friends. Along the way, he’s captured and interrogated in a settlement by a man named Seto Kaiba.Soon, Joey finds out that in the apocalypse, everything is negotiable.—Zombie Apocalypse AU,Puppyshipping
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Kaiba Seto
Series: Whump/Hurt/Comfort challenge [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1246169
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Merciful

**Author's Note:**

> Another bingo board spot! 
> 
> Prompt was ‘wrongfully arrested’. I got kind of carried away. 
> 
> Warning: descriptions of zombie apocalypse styled violence and/or gore, like the tags note.

“Wake up!” 

Joey’s eyes snapped open. He breath caught in his throat and his cased the cement walls around him, disappointed that they hadn’t changed. 

It wasn’t a dream. He really sat in a squat holding cell with the fetid, half-decomposed remains of what he presumed was the last person who and the unfortunate luck to came to this little settlement looking for shelter. 

“You going to be more cooperative today?” A squeaky voice asked. 

Joey wriggled around to get a look at the speaker, but he couldn’t get far. His back was forced against the bars, with his arms pulled through them and zip tied behind him outside of the cell. He couldn’t stand up or lay down. He could only lean as far forward at to get his elbows level with his shoulders, and even then, a horizontal bar prevented him from going any further. 

Still, he tried to wrench around and get a better look. The most he could see was a beaten pair of red sneakers and ripped up blue jeans. 

“I was cooperative yesterday,” he muttered. 

Something tapped his elbow, and it made his fingers twitch.

“Uh, I don’t think so,” said squeaky voice. The boy was ten, maybe twelve years old. “You didn’t answer any questions, like why you spit on the watchmen. That’s pretty disgusting.” 

“I didn’t spit on anyone.” 

“That’s not what they told me. They said you came into town and spit on them when they asked where you were coming from,” Squeaky explained. “You know that spit can turn you into an undead, right?” 

“The hell it does! What kinda phoney crap is that?” 

“Come on, spit, mouths, bites. It’s all the same. My brother says it has to be some enzyme that causes people to reanimate.” Squeaky shuffled closer, close enough that Joey could see part of his face. It was a young face, with grey eyes and long, black hair. “So why are you going around trying to turn people into the undead, huh? Are you one of those crazy people who doesn’t think the virus is real?” 

“I didn’t spit on anyone!” Joey snarled. 

“Why should I believe you?” 

“Because.” 

“Because isn’t an answer.” 

“I jus’ didn’t, okay?” Joey said. His chin touched his chest. “What stupid idiot comes into town jus’ so he can spit on people? Is that really a problem that you guys have? Is that why this guy is in here with me?” He almost turned to the corpse, but he looked at the ground instead. 

The kid stuck his arms through the bars. “I dunno, what do you think?” 

“I think I was stupid to come to this stupid town.” 

“It’s not a stupid town,” the kid said.

Joey begged to differ. This whole town seemed like a nuthouse, or maybe it was a trap. He knew he shouldn’t have believed that white-haired kid at the gas station, but he was desperate. He hadn’t had a roof over his head for a month or more. It had rained twelve times and all of his socks had been soaked through. He was running low on food and hadn’t found a place who’s water wasn’t stagnant and covered with bugs. This little town, a place called KC, was a God-send. Or so he thought. 

“It’s a stupid town,” Joey insisted. “It’s got two letters for a name, who name’s a place like that?” 

“My brother does, thank you very much.” 

The kid had his cheeks smushed against the bars. He still had a baby face; in another life, before the world was full of the undead, he might have been cute. A little annoying, but cute. Right now, he was serious, with his big, black brows furrowed like he meant business. The gun loosely dangling from one hand said he was. 

“Well, your brother’s an idiot.” 

“No, you’re the idiot, and if we didn’t lock you up, you were going to kill all of us,” the kid said. “He didn’t set up this place just so people like you could come in here and wipe us all out.”

The kid pulled back to leave, but not before kicking Joey in the small of the back. He bit his tongue but didn’t cry out. He wasn’t going to let these crazy people win. 

—

It took two days before anyone else spoke to Joey. His tongue dried out and his stomach twisted inside his chest. He hadn’t eaten much in the week before he found the KC settlement. A few bites of jerky, some canned beans he’d pried open. The scorching summer and long stretches of walking didn’t leave him with much of an appetite. Now, he hadn’t eaten in so long, he couldn’t decide if he was hungry or just sick. 

But he was weak. 

He slipped down as far as the zip ties would let him. His back and hips ached. He struggled to keep his eyes open and ended up sleeping most of the day and waking up, again and again, thinking that this was a bad dream. That he’d wake up in the booth of some roadside diner and slip his shoes on to keep on walking. He’d reach his sister, Serenity, eventually, it was only a matter of time. 

That is, if he got out of this hellhole. 

It had been nine months since the initial outbreak. People thought the virus was some fad being spread around on the internet. That people were showing up in flash mobs and pretending to be zombies like in the movies. No. They were really hordes, and people were using the footage and playing happy music over it so that people thought it was a normal, everyday thing. He believed it at first. He played pranks with his coworkers at the mall, pretending to be the undead and sneaking up on each other. They had videos that had gotten a few likes and reposts, but nothing that went viral. 

And then a mob tore into their shoe store. It came like a wave, body over body. They didn’t move as slow as he’d seen in the movies. They gnashed and growled and dug their fingernails into flesh until it tore from the muscle. He still remembered them catching one of the trainees, a girl with an M-name that he regretted not remembering. She screamed until her lungs gave out—or the undead took them from her—but Joey didn’t look back, he just ran. Him and his manager who, as they tumbled down the back hall towards the exit, tripped him when a group of two or three of the undead found them. He’d got lucky and grabbed a nearby dry-mop to fend them off just long enough to get out. 

By the time he got outside, it seemed like hundreds of them were roving the parking lot. Mindless, twitching. They were ashen and emaciated. The whites of their eyes had turned yellow or red, and their jaws permanently snapped open and closed, ready to ravenously rip into the first ripe morsel they found. He cowered by the loading doc, wedging himself between a semi and metal-slat garage door. The mop was firmly gripped in one hand, a sickle-like trailer hook in the other. He waited hours, until twilight, before coming out. Even then, he would run in bursts before ducking behind a car, waiting, and then moving on. 

Eventually, he made it to his car and tore out of the parking lot. A mob of the slack-jawed monsters chased the sound all the way to the highway. There, they were mowed down by cars that reacted one of two ways: stopping entirely, wondering what they’d hit, or accelerating until the languid bodies vaulted over their hood in chunks. 

Joey opted for the latter. It was the only way he was going to keep up with the panicked traffic and get home. 

That was the last time he drove. His car took a beating back to his apartment. The windshield was smashed to pieces and the engine made a wet clicking sound. He didn’t remember going upstairs, only that he’d made it to his fifth floor apartment and passed out with his television stand in front of the door. The undead weren’t knocking yet, but they weren’t growling and circling the block for prey. One of his neighbours began shooting them out of his window for sport. Every so often he’d hear: “Ten points, motherfucker!” which gave him the smallest amount of joy. At least someone was happy. But there wasn’t enough ammunition to keep all the undead at bay. 

He called Serenity and his friends for the first week, checking up on them as often as he could. Yugi was in San Francisco. Tristan had been motorcycling across the country. His sister was at college in Chicago. 

After two weeks, the food in his fridge had either gone bad or been eaten. He needed to go out and find something to eat. He tempted to ask the neighbour, but they’d gone quiet. He asked his friends for advice on how to proceed, more afraid than unsure, and texted them all the way to corner store. He carried a carving knife with him and looked over his shoulder at every hiss and grunt. 

No one manned the store. It was unlocked, and someone had shattered the glass door to unlock it. Glass and metal crunched beneath his shoes. The lights flickered. Rustling came from the back, and his heart skipped a beat. 

As a kid, he hadn’t liked haunted houses, couldn’t watch scary movies, and hated when his friends snuck up on him. He thought, as he crept through the shoulder high aisles of the convenience store, that the last two weeks of mind-numbing trauma, of constant radio reports of how the virus was being handled, of hearing about gruesome deaths and body counts, he’d have gotten better. But the knife shook between his sweaty palms. He hesitated in grabbing Hamburger Helper, potato chips. Soda. Anything he could hold in his arms and drop in a discarded shopping basket. 

He rounded the aisles of the store, the knife always pointed forward. Nothing came at his back, but in the distance, something was slipping and sliding. Glass twinkled, and he the crinkling of a potato chip bag made him jump two feet and pivot, lunging the knife forward. 

It stuck firm in the eye socket of an undead. It had his shirt arm in a vice grip, it’s teeth gnawing on his forearm to get a taste. And then, as he twisted the knife, it’s pincer-like fingers slipped off and it fell forward, further into the blade, until it’s forehead touched the hilt. 

Joey dropped the knife and sprinted out of the storm. He might have been screaming, or crying, or both, all the way back to his apartment. He didn’t know. His throat hurt and his eyelids burned, and he spent the afternoon and half the night shivering and wretching, forgetting he was hungry or that he hugged a basket of food. 

It only got worse from there. 

Rolling blackouts began. Cell service started to dip in and out. The radio had stopped reporting anything at all, though his neighbour would yell at him for fiddling with the radio, saying that it would all be over soon. Joey wasn’t sure what that meant; the undead still roamed around outside, and his neighbour had been shooting less and less. And then one day, at the end of the month, a single shot rang out. And then his neighbour stopped talking. 

Joey told Serenity, and Serenity told him to come find her in Chicago. She told him that her college still had power and running water. So he packed up everything he thought he’d need in a backpack and hit the road. He resolved that if he had to stab another undead through the eye, he would, but he made sure to grab a machete from a hardware store first. Distance, he told himself. 

And he walked. And hid. And fought. And cried. And started it all over again. He kept his friends updated until one day, Tristan stopped texting. And then Yugi. 

The last message he had from Serenity had been four months ago, which was also the last time he’d been able to charge his phone. Not that he needed to see it, he knew what all of their messages said: 

_> > Tristan: good and cool this year_

_> > Yugi: I miss my weekly DnD nights, we should do that again soon_

_> > Serenity: I’m going to bake scones when you get here. Becky wants to meet you, too. She’s nice, you two would be good for each other _

As if he was worried about dating. He’d made sure to clean up though, in case he came across a good girl—or guy—he didn’t want to be covered in undead guts and his own puke. He’d stopped throwing up three or four months in. It took too much energy, and he just moved on. If he could help it, he would look away, and if he had the opportunity, he’d cover up the remains. Undead, real-dead. Didn’t matter. They deserved some decency, and even though he wanted to, he didn’t take their shoes or coats. It didn’t seem right. There were other places to get those things. There was always a strip mall or a home goods store to sleep in and scavenge. 

He thought, eventually, he would make it to Serenity. To Yugi. To Tristan. He’d gone through so much shit and torment that he would see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

He thought KC might have been that light. 

So when someone came into the room and patted him awake, he wept involuntarily. He clenched his jaw to stifle the worst of the hiccuping. They didn’t need to hear him cry; it wasn’t about the now, just the everything. The overwhelming feeling of having done so much and gotten so far for it all to mean nothing. That this was where he died, alone, in a cell shared with a decomposed corpse. 

“Did you spit on my watchmen?” a cool, gravelled voice asked. 

“N-no.” 

“What happened?” 

“I came to town,” Joey said between breaths. “Someone sent me here. They said that ya had clean water.” 

A knowing hum. “Do you know who?” 

“No,” Joey answered. He twisted to get a look at the curiously aloof voice. It wasn’t very kind, but not cruel either. As far as he could see, a lanky man with brown hair squatted beside him. “Does it matter? Ya stuck me in here, so who gives a fuck?” 

“I do. Describe him.” 

“An’ who’re you?” 

“Kaiba. Seto Kaiba, I run this settlement.” 

Kaiba. That name sounded vaguely familiar, like he’d heard it in the news. 

Joey turned away and slackened in his restraints. He unfurled his fists after he realised his nails had dug in so deep that they drew blood. 

“Describe him,” Kaiba pressed. 

“Short kid, white hair. Like one of those albinos.” 

“Mm.” 

Kaiba stood, and Joey heard a ‘click’. His eyes widened and he thrashed around in the restraints until his wrists started to bleed. “Ya can’t kill me, ya bastard! I was jus’ comin’ here for water. I didn’t spit on your meatheads, okay? You people are crazy. I jus’ wanted water, okay? I jus’—,” 

His wrists loosened and he fell face-first into the cell. He thought he’d snapped them, and he was almost grateful to lay on his stomach and stretch out his back before he died. 

Flipping over, he met eyes with the man that he thought was going to kill him. 

Kaiba was lithe and tall, all knees and elbows. He wore clean clothes and shined shoes. Every hair was in place. More than anything though, Joey noticed the vibrant blue eyes that scanned him head to toe. 

“You’re welcome,” Kaiba said, holding up a knife and the cut-up zip ties between pinched fingers. “I’m not letting you out yet, though. I still need you to stay there for a few more days” 

“What! Why?” 

“To see if you’re immune.” 

Joey’s jaw hitched. He was too tired and hungry to care what that meant entirely, but still asked: “Immune to what? The virus?” 

“Yes. You don’t seem to be able to catch any airborne factors,” Kaiba said, jutting his chin towards the corpse. 

“Didn’t know you could get sick that way.” 

Kaiba smirked. “Neither did the biologists studying it. They thought it was through fluids only, more specifically from wounds inflicted by the carriers. Bites, scratches, gouges. Anything that causes the skin to break. It’s why it spread so fast, I believe. The microbes were under their fingernails.” 

Furrowing his brows, Joey struggled to sit upright before falling. His shoulders and hips hurt too much to sit right. His back popped as he laid spread eagle on the floor. 

“You don’t seem interested,” Kaiba said blandly. 

“It’s been hell, an’ now I’m in a cell hopin’ you don’t shoot my brains out ‘cause you’re a mad scientist.” Joey rolled onto his side to keep an eye on Kaiba. The man hadn’t moved. “I can’t stay here, man. I’m not immune, okay? I’m sure if I got bit I’d turn, too. And unless you’re gonna have some rabid undead bite me, I got better places to be.” 

“And if you had been bit?” 

“I haven’t been.” 

“You have,” Kaiba said. He moved closer and held out his hand, motioning Joey closer. When the blond didn’t move, Kaiba said: “Come over here, idiot. I’ll show you.” 

“No way. You aren’t touchin’ me.” 

Kaiba scowled and took his hand back. “Then look at your left forearm. Underside. There. You have fresh scars from what look like molars and bicuspids. Something’s bit you, so if it wasn’t an undead, then fine. But it looks human and newer, so I can only assume that it was.” 

Joey clutched his arm and pulled it in close. His thumb ran over the indents that hadn’t quite healed since the run-in with the undead at the convenience store. It turned into gnarly, blue-grey scabs afterwards, but they had been the least of his worries compared to the state of the world. Compared to worrying about Serenity and his friends being alright. 

“What do you want?” Joey asked. 

“You.” 

“That sounds creepy.” 

Kaiba shrugged. “I don’t care how you think it sounds. I need you, or your immunity, or both. A few days and some vials of blood at the very least, and then you can go and do whatever it was you were doing before you came here. Or...” Kaiba drawled off.

“...or?” 

“Or, if you agree to stay longer and undergo other experiments and keep me company, I can offer lucrative things in return.”

“Like what?” Joey asked, propping himself up on his elbows.

Kaiba leaned his cheek into his fist, and a Cheshire-like grin flashed on his face for a second. He wasn’t a bad looking man. A little skinny, but most people he’d run into were anymore. Starving, rationing, conserving energy. Kaiba was also pale, but clean and well-kept. So they probably had running water. What he wouldn’t give for a shower and hot meal that wasn’t a lukewarm can of beans and jerky cooked over embers masquerading as a campfire. 

“What do you want?” Kaiba asked. 

“I...” Joey paused. There was no reason to trust Kaiba with his deeper secrets, yet. This place had immediately thrown him in a cell under false pretences. He didn’t need to give them any more ammo. “Bath. Hot food. A...bed if I’m stuck in here.” 

Kaiba shrugged and leaned back. “Mokuba!” 

The black-haired kid appeared. “What’s up, Seto?” 

“Go get a tray from the mess hall for...”and Kaiba’s striking eyes met Joey’s. 

He was caught off guard. His tongue went from swivelled to swollen in his mouth. He didn’t trust Kaiba; he wasn’t the kind of smarty-pants that Joey would have ever liked or hung out with, but he hadn’t been unkind entirely. He was already offering food and water, and it sounded like there was so much more he could ask of Kaiba, like safe passage to Chicago. Plus, Kaiba wasn’t bad to look at, so Joey’s prick was telling him.

Clamping his legs together, he sputtered out: “Uh...Joey. Joey Wheeler. From NYC.” 

“Go get a tray from the mess hall for Joseph from New York City,” Kaiba repeated smoothly. 

“Gotcha!” Mokuba saluted, and he bolted away.

Kaiba stuck his hand through the bars again. “Do we have a deal?” 

Tentatively, Joey took Kaiba’s hand. The first human touch he’d had in months on the road. Kaiba’s hand was so velvety and warm, he didn’t want to let go. “Yeah. Deal,” he said. “I gotta feeling this is gonna be the beginnin’ of a very...beautiful relationship.” 

Kaiba’s eyes glinted and his fingers slithered between Joey’s. “Mm, very beautiful indeed.” 

And for the first time in months, Joey smiled. 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that’s what it is. Sort of an AU first chapter, sorta can be whatever you want it to be. I’m going to leave it here. 
> 
> Anyways, tell me what you think!


End file.
